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In 1912 ‘Flagler’s Folly’ became ‘eighth wonder of the world’

This week marks the 100th anniversary of Henry Flagler’s railroad to Key West. While it operated far from Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast, its builder is part of the fabric of this region.

The Flagler Museum recently wrapped up its exhibition, “First Train to Paradise: The Railroad That Went to Sea.”

Here’s something we wrote in 1994, on the centennial of the opening of his first Palm Beach hotel, the Royal Poinciana:

Henry Flagler had one last accomplishment in mind: the monumental task of building a 128-mile-long oversea railroad to link the mainland with Key West.

The railroad cost Flagler $20 million, two-fifths of his total Florida investment. Detractors called it “Flagler’s Folly.”

But in 1912, after seven years of work by 3,000 to 4,000 men, the railroad had come to Key West.

While The Miami Herald would call it the eighth wonder of the world, critics who said it never would pay for itself were proven right. The wonder would last less than a quarter century before it was demolished by the 1935 “Labor Day” storm and replaced by the Overseas Highway.

But on that glorious day in January 1912, a stooped and weak Flagler made a triumphant entrance to a frenzied Key West, where he was overcome by the import of the moment.

A dapper, though weakened, Henry Flagler walks triumphantly off his train when it arrives for the first time in Key West in 1912. (Photo courtesy of the Florida Photographic Collection)

While his friend John Rockefeller was trying to make it to age 100 up in Ormond Beach — he failed by three years in 1937 — Flagler also was falling victim to age. He could barely see or hear. He had become introspective and lonely and would be seen sitting silently.

A year later, in January 1913, while entering a bathroom around the side from Whitehall’s lobby stairway, he fell down three steps to the landing below, breaking his hip. He later would slip into a coma. His son Harry, estranged from his father since 1894, rushed to his side, but it was too late: Flagler did not recognize him.

Artists from the Art Guild of the Purple Isles and Island Christian School put the finishing touches on a 60-foot-wide outdoor mural last month in Key Largo. The mural, at mile marker 95, depicts Henry Flagler’s Florida Keys Over-Sea Railroad. The artwork was created for the Jan. 22 centennial anniversary of the completion of the ‘railroad that went to sea.’ Though The Miami Herald called it the eighth wonder of the world, it remained in operation only until September 1935, less than a quarter of a century. (AP/Andy Newman/Florida Keys News Bureau)

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